Monthly Archives: July 2007

I’ve been negligent when it comes to reporting on the efforts of Senate Democrats to block the nomination of Judge Leslie Southwick to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and their accompanying smear campaign. Fortunately, Ed Whelan at NRO’s Bench Memos has been doing his usual great job, and you should check out his posts on the subject (just keep scrolling) from which much of the discussion below is drawn. »

The Democrats are going completely insane over Alberto Gonzales. Today four Democratic Senators released a list of items of false testimony that they claim Gonzales gave to various committees, and called for the appointment of a special prosecutor and a perjury investigation. The centerpiece of the Democrats’ claims is Gonzales’s testimony earlier this week that the subject of disagreement inside the Justice Department that gave rise to his visit to »

Today’s Washington Post has a front-page story about Fred Thompson called “No Easy Verdict on Thompson The Lawyer: Cases Indicate Willingness to Defy GOP Orthodoxy.” The title is just plain silly. A lawyer’s duty is always to his client, not to any political orthodoxy. Had Thompson not been willing to “defy GOP orthodoxy” when necessary to promote his client’s interest (as where he argued against a search that found incriminating »

If you read Tony Blankley’s column on the Democrats’ CNN Youtube forum earlier this week, you get biting commentary on the retreat-and-defeat mania of the candidates (and their target audience). You also get this appreciation of John Edwards’s hair: For the first time Monday, CNN provided us with sustained close-up shots of Sen. John Edwards’ haircut, and I can now understand why he paid between $400-$1,200 a cut. At middle »

The AP reports from Baghdad: The U.S. military has noted a “significant improvement” in the aim of attackers firing rockets and mortars into the heavily fortified Green Zone in the past three months that it has linked to training in Iran, a top commander said Thursday. *** Odierno said networks continue to smuggle powerful roadside bombs and mortars across the border from Iran despite Tehran’s assertions that it supports stability »

“The editors” of the New Republic have posted a statement from the soldier formerly known as Scott Thomas — he now identifies himself as Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp — with this preface: As we’ve noted in this space, some have questioned details that appeared in the Diarist “Shock Troops,” published under the pseudonym Scott Thomas. According to Major Kirk Luedeke, a public affairs officer at Forward Operating Base Falcon, a »

Paul writes below about Alberto Gonzales’s Senate Judiciary Committee testimony. Gonzales testified that he went to the hospital to see John Ashcroft, then the Attorney General, in part to communicate to him the consensus of Congressional leaders that a particular anti-terrorist program, whose legality was being questioned after two years of re-authorizations, should be continued. The Washington Post tried to cast doubt on this testimony, but in fact the sources »

I think we managed to miss the news that the University of Colorado fired Ward Churchill this week. It fired him for serial academic fraud — making stuff up and also claiming that the work of others was his. The faculty’s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct had concluded by a two-thirds majority that he should be fired. The chancellor and university president had both concurred. Thus, it was a no-brainer »

Last night, CBS News did a segment on President Bush’s speech in South Carolina earlier in the day. We posted on the speech, which was excellent, here; you can read the full text here. Here is the CBS story on Bush’s speech: CBS’s attack on Bush is remarkable. The network essentially called the President a liar. Here are some of CBS’s key statements; let’s take them one by one: President »

Yesterday, Alberto Gonzales testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he and Andrew Card visited John Ashcroft at the hospital following a meeting with key congressional leaders during which the consensus was that a certain terrorist surveillance program should continue. Ashcroft had given up his duties as Attorney General due to illness, and his temporary replacement had said the program was unlawful even though the Justice Department had authorized it »

Yesterday the American ambassador to Iraq held a seven-hour meeting with Iranian officials in Baghdad. On the one hand, Ambassador Crocker wants it to be thought that he heatedly objected to Iranian interference in Iraq. On the other hand, Ambasador Crocker seems to have invited the Iranians to join us and the Iraqis on a “security committee” for the future of Iraq. Michael Ledeen comments: We got nothing »

Yesterday the FBI raided the Dearborn offices of two “charities,” one of which was raising money for Hezbollah. The Treasury Department has frozen the assets of the latter organization pursuant to its designation as a terrorist supporting organization. Iran appears to be operating brazenly in Dearborn. To understand what is happening here, and what isn’t happening, see Debbie Schlussel’s posts here and here. »

At the Weekly Standard blog, Michael Goldfarb documents the strange saga of the online version of yesterday’s New York Times story on the New Republic’s pseudonymous Baghdad Diarist “Scott Thomas.” I wrote about the Times story (version 1.0) in “Franklin Foer talks again.” Goldfarb observed the Times changing the story during the day with respect to the story’s quote of New Republic editor Foer: [Foer] said that he had met »

Last night, the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign celebrated the opening of its new San Francisco headquarters with a party coinciding with the Democratic presidential debate. Far-out antiwar groups Breasts Not Bombs and Code Pink infiltrated the party to stage a topless protest–against Hillary, I guess, but I’m not sure why. Anyway, the tireless Zombie picked up word of the impending protest on the web, and was there to record »

I’ve never been a fan of Alberto Gonzales, mostly because he isn’t very conservative. But, reading this Associated Press account of his appearance today before the Senate Judiciary Committee–perhaps the world’s number one center of ill-founded self-righteousness–it’s hard not to be sympathetic: Democrats and Republicans alike hammered Gonzales in four hours of testimony as he denied trying, as White House counsel in 2004, to push a hospitalized attorney general into »